Music to My Pointy Ears

172.

“If by being liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our polices abroad, if that is what they mean by being a “Liberal”, then I am proud to say I am a “Liberal.”

It has always been my contention that any new technology requires relentless testing. The Helmet is the technology and my latest test is regarding its uncanny and brilliant feature that The Queen has programmed to act as its ‘soul.’

The artificial intelligence most common to modern computer applications contains the DNA bias of the programmer. It can be rigidly binary in strict observance of objectivity, or subliminally ‘suggest’ certain modalities as ‘better than others.’ Depending on the desired outcome of the program, this allows for a virtually unlimited opportunity to steer the vehicle towards the desired destination. You might call it a digital map. The Queen has taken it a step further through the tried and true methodology of starting from the conclusion and working backwards, a device frequently employed by writers, especially those in the science fiction genre.

It works on the premise that the desired result has several roads leading to it; The long game, the meandering, and the path of least resistance. Frodo Baggins played the long game, Jack Kerouac the meandering and Siddhartha Gautama walked the path of instant enlightenment. The AI code embedded into the utility of the Helmet works as a real-time navigational function that provides continual prompts alerting the 'pilot’ to the best choices in any given circumstance. If, as an example, the Helmet, using its weather forecasting capability, notices a turn by the Pilot into the path of a pending hail storm, a tone is delivered to advise another tact. The Queen also claims that a similar function works with verbal interactions as well. If, as she has painstakingly outlined in the users manual, one was engaged in a debate that has direct consequence to the mission's success, a ‘good, better, best” series of tones would ensure that the Pilot stays on tack and on topic. This feature she calls the ‘Verometer’: vero meaning truth and meter its volume, with the pronunciation emphasis on the second syllable.

This is the feature I am interested in testing today.

The ways and means of my test consists of recording three short quotes from three diverse authors. I then place a small speaker inside the Helmet and play the tape, all the while monitoring the programs response by listening to the subsequent tones, each a perfectly suited pitch and frequency; Good is a pleasant Chopin-ish note implying harmony, not-so-good is indicated by a discordant and abrupt atonal clang and bad is a solid thud. After a period of time in adjustment and adaption, this rather Pavlovian process actually alters one’s methodology and reasoning. It is, she argues, as close to installing a heart and soul into a computer program as technology has achieved in the seventy years of its fledgling existence. She goes as far as to add that even Mr Spock would appreciate its emotional relevancy.

I am genuinely encouraged and more than a touch surprised to hear a series of pleasant sounding harmonic tones during the test recording of JFK’s brilliant observation on liberalism.

It is music to my pointy ears.